Old Portrait/Painting

[Nan]

I posted this photo in another forum and Craig suggested that I bring it here if I needed help. I'm taking his advice since I haven't started on it yet and want to go about it the right way.
Suggestions appreciated.
Nan
Here's the link to the full size image.
http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o...os/Lucybfr.jpg

[Sweetlight]

Hi,
Just a few questions.
Are we looking at the original? If not may we. This has become very painterly, was that the work you did or was this from an era where photos were handcolored by the creator? What is your goal?

Okay, I found your first post down the page. Yes, to me it appears to be from the 60's when the photographers would hand color a lot. This appears to be a little heavy-handed but who knows what criteria they were trying to meet.
Chris

[Nan]

Chris,
I haven't done anything to it. It was found in an old family Bible, scanned and sent to me. I basically just want to clean it up.
Nan

[woofw]

how about this?

[Sweetlight]

What puzzles me is in that era for a photo not to have a name in the bottom right corner hand-written. Was there an artist or wanna-be that may have hand-colored it? Just a curious mind. Sorry.

c

[Sweetlight]

I hope this is what you were looking for. Just cleaned it up, took out a bit of the yellow, lightened/brightned the eyes and lips just a smidge.

Chris

[Nan]

Chris,
You did a nice job on it. Did you use a noise removal filter or smudge, clone?
Looks great.
I don't know who might have painted it. The lady is my grandmother and she's been gone for over 20 years. My cousin found it in our gr grandmother's Bible.
She said there was nothing written on the back either.
Thanks for showing me how this can clean up.
Nan

[Sweetlight]

I'm sorry but terrible about remembering the "how I did it" notes. It was all clone tool, creating and pasting new layers to repair some hair areas and curves for correction of eyes and lips. I almost wanted to add a lot of charcoal type strokes as it appears there are some in the process already. There are lots of ways you could tweak this. It is not far from resembling a Dick Tracy cartoon character to me for some reason.

Let me know if you have any other questions


cwaltersart@yahoo.com

[Nan]

Woofw,
I'm looking at these and noticed that I got messages mixed up. You did the first restore. It's really nice.
Do you remember what you did to accomplish that?
Sorry for the mix-up.
Nan

[Nan]

Chris,
I agree, it looks cartoonish. The colors are so exteme.
Nan

[Sweetlight]

Okay, Now that I know we agreed, here is a representation of what I think it may have looked like before the heavy-handed color. Less saturation, removal of some of that silly yellow hair which was someone trying to hand mix tints to brown. I think what made it so "cartoony" was the thick black line around her hair.
Have a good one.

Chris

[woofw]

Hi Nan,
First I smooth the skin in Noiseware, then clone out the imperfections. brighten the eyes and darken other areas with 'paint with light'
last used the smudge tool to smoothe out the jpegs artifacts.
I sharpen it slightly with the high pass filter.
Did not alter the colors as I think that might have been the era where photos were hand painted. Iif you like the pic i can put it on 'you send it'

[Nan]

Thanks for the help. Although the colors are extreme like I said previously, I still want to keep it close to the original since that was the way it was originally intended. Also because it must have been what grandma wanted.
I've seen portraits done like this before, I just don't remember where right off hand. The photo's a little strange by todays standards but I do kind of like it.
I'll be working on it to see how well I can get it cleaned up.
Thanks again,
Nan